Internet
The Internet is a global network of computers and computers networks (the “Net”). The Internet connects computers that use a variety of different operating systems or languages, including UNIX, DOS, Windows, Macintosh, and others. To facilitate and allow the communication among these various systems and languages, the Internet uses a language referred to as TCP/IP (“Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol”). TCP/IP protocol supports three basic applications on the Internet:                transmitting and receiving electronic mail,        logging into remote computers (the “Telnet”), and        transferring files and programs from one computer to another (“FTP” or “File Transfer Protocol”).TCP/IP        
The TCP/IP protocol suite is named for two of the most important protocols:                a Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), and        an Internet Protocol (IP).        
Another name for it is the Internet Protocol Suite. The more common term TCP/IP is used to refer to the entire protocol suite. The first design goal of TCP/IP is to build an interconnection of networks that provide universal communication services: an internetwork, or Internet. Each physical network has its own technology dependent communication interface, in the form of a programming interface that provides basic communication functions running between the physical network and the user applications. The architecture of the physical networks is hidden from the user. The second goal of TCP/IP is to interconnect different physical networks to form what appears to the user to be one large network.
TCP is a transport layer protocol providing end to end data transfer. It is responsible for providing a reliable exchange of information between 2 computer systems. Multiple applications can be supported simultaneously over one TCP connection between two computer systems.
IP is an internetwork layer protocol hiding the physical network architecture bellow it. Part of the communicating messages between computers is a routing function that ensures that messages will be correctly directed within the network to be delivered to their destination. IP provides this routing function. An IP message is called an IP Datagram.
Application Level protocols are used on top of TCP/IP to transfer user and application data from one origin computer system to one destination computer system. Such Application Level protocols are for instance File Transfer Protocol (FTP), Telnet, Gopher, Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP).
IP Router
A “Router” is a computer that interconnects two networks and forwards messages from one network to the other. Routers are able to select the best transmission path between networks. The basic routing function is implemented in the IP layer of the TCP/IP protocol stack, so any host (or computer) or workstation running TCP/IP over more than one interface could, in theory, forward messages between networks. Because IP implements the basic routing functions, the term “IP Router” is often used. However, dedicated network hardware devices called “Routers” can provide more sophisticated routing functions than the minimum functions implemented in IP.
World Wide Web
With the increasing size and complexity of the Internet, tools have been developed to help find information on the network, often called navigators or navigation systems. Navigation systems that have been developed include standards such as Archie, Gopher and WAIS. The World Wide Web (“WWW” or “the Web”) is a recent superior navigation system. The Web is:                an Internet-based navigation system,        an information distribution and management system for the Internet, and        a dynamic format for communicating on the Web.The Web seamlessly, for the use, integrates format of information, including still images, text, audio and video. A user on the Web using a graphical user interface (“GUI”, pronounced “gooey”) may transparently communicate with different host computers on the system, different system applications (including FTP and Telnet), and different information formats for files and documents including, for example, text, sound and graphics.Hypermedia        
The Web uses hypertext and hypermedia. Hypertext is a subset of hypermedia and refers to computer-based “documents” in which readers move from one place to another in a document, or to another document, in a non-linear manner. To do this, the Web uses a client-server architecture. The Web servers enable the user to access hypertext and hypermedia information through the Web and the user's computer. (The user's computer is referred to as a client computer of the Web Server computers.) The clients send requests to the Web Servers, which react, search and respond. The Web allows client application software to request and receive hypermedia documents (including formatted text, audio, video and graphics) with hypertext link capabilities to other hypermedia documents, from a Web file server. The Web, then, can be viewed as a collection of document files residing on Web host computers that are interconnected by hyperlinks using networking protocols, forming a virtual “web” that spans the Internet.
Uniform Resource Locators
A resource of the Internet is unambiguously identified by a Uniform Resource Locator (URL), which is a pointer to a particular resource at a particular location. A URL specifies the protocol used to access a server (e.g. HTTP, FTP, . . . ), the name of the server, and the location of a file on that server. To insure that data is sent to and received by the appropriate systems on the Internet, every “device” (i.e., PC workstation, HTTP Server, File Server, etc.) has a unique address, called IP address. The IP address is presently a 32 bit binary address, which is fine for computers to read, but is cumbersome for a human user to memorize or use. To make them more “user-friendly”, symbolic names are assigned to IP addresses. The mapping between IP addresses and symbolic names, for example myhost.ibm.com, is done by a “Domain Name Server”.
Hyper Text Transfer Protocol
Each Web page that appears on client monitors of the Web may appear as a complex document that integrates, for example, text, images, sounds and animation. Each such page may also contain hyperlinks to other Web documents so that a user at a client computer using a mouse may click on icons and may activate hyperlink jumps to a new page (which is a graphical representation of another document file) on the same or a different Web server.
Web Servers
A Web server is a software program on a Web host computer that answers requests from Web clients, typically over the Internet. All Web servers use a language or protocol to communicate with Web clients which is called Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (“HTTP”). All types of data can be exchanged among Web servers and clients using this protocol, including Hyper Text Markup Language (“HTML”), graphics, sound and video. HTML describes the layout, contents and hyperlinks of the documents and pages. Web clients when browsing:                convert user specified commands into HTTP GET requests,        connect to the appropriate Web server to get information, and        wait for a response. The response from the server can be the requested document or an error message.        
After the document or an error message is returned, the connection between the Web client and the Web server is closed.
First version of HTTP is a stateless protocol. That is, with HTTP there is no continuous connection between each client and each server. The Web client using HTTP receives a response as HTML data or other data. This description applies to version 1.0 of HTTP protocol, while the new version 1.1 breaks this barrier of stateless protocol by keeping the connection between the server and client alive under certain conditions.
Web Browser
The Web client formats and presents the data received from the Web server for example by activating an ancillary application such as a sound player. The Web Client is also referred to as the Web browser, since it in fact browses documents retrieved from the Web Server. Web browsers are used by the Internet user to convert information received into a format that can be displayed by the Web browser on the video screen (or through the audio speakers) of the user workstation. The Web browser is thus an application program that runs on the user workstation and that acts as a translator of HTML information. Several different commercial Web browsers are available including, for example, the Netscape Communicator browser. The Web browser is also used to recognize clicks on the screen made by a user with the pointing device of his workstation. When the user clicks with his pointing device on a portion of the screen associated with a hypertext link, the Web browser recognizes the user's action as a request to get a file from a Web site identified by an URL. The Web server delivers the data to the Web browser, which translates it into a format that can be presented to the user.
Sometimes, the information returned from the Web server (and subsequently to the Web browser) cannot be processed by the particular Web browser used in the user workstation. This occurs, for example, when video data is returned to a Web browser that does not have the appropriate application software to display the video on the user workstation. In this case, the Web browser enlists a specific application resident on the Web client to display the incoming data. For example, when the Web browser receives video data from the Internet, it frequently opens a viewer, which appears as a window on the screen of the Web client. This viewer will process the incoming video data through the Web browser and will display the video on the user's screen. The Web browser knows which viewer is required for a particular file based on an extension (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension (MIME)) attached to the file name.
Activating Hyperlinks
On an internet page, hyperlinks can be assigned to textual information or to pictures. A hypertext link may appear as a picture, or as a word or sentence, possibly underlined or otherwise accentuated to indicate that it is an embedded link and not just normal, informative text.
FIG. 1 shows a conventional method for activating hyperlinks present in an electronic document. When the user clicks on an hyperlink, the Web browser records the position of the pointer. The Web browser then refers to a look-up table to identify the URL address assigned to the position of the pointer. When clicked, the Web browser program requests a connection to the Web server hosting the file, and also requests from the Web server the file identified by the URL. Once the Web server accepts the connection requested by the Web browser, the Web server transmits back to the Web browser the requested file. Once the requested file is received, the Web browser delivers or presents the content of the file to the requesting user.
By placing and clicking the pointing device on the text or on a picture, the user selects a new internet page. In either case, text or picture, the Internet page comprises linked locations or “hot spots,” located at (X, Y) coordinates on the page. When the Web browser detects the click of a pointing device over a “hotspot, it identifies the associated URL and sends the filename portion of the URL to the Web server located at the domain name portion of the URL. A picture may further be flagged as having a “map” associated with it. If it does, the relative coordinates of the click within the picture are sent to the Web server as well. The Web server then determines which page to return, based on the location of the click.
User Interaction with Electronic and Physical Documents
During the last years, due mainly to the widespread use of personal computers and CD-ROMs and due to the universal access of millions of users to the World Wide Web, the “multimedia publishing” has veritably exploded. An enormous amount of multimedia and hypermedia information combining text, images and sounds, are now accessible to users of personal computers.
During many years, conventional electronic documents (e.g., e-books) were displayed on computer screens on a page-by-page format. The page-by-page presentation has made the on-line review of large electronic documents a slow and inefficient operation. To solve this problem, specific programs for reading softcopy book have been devised. For example, IBM BookManager (TM) or Adobe Acrobat (TM) programs have been specially designed to help users to manage, search and read books directly on the screen.
Also, when browsing a document on the Web, the problem with most conventional Web browsers is that, when a user selects and activates a hyperlink, a new page is loaded in the Web browser, and this new page completely replaces the previous page. The previous page is not displayed simultaneously with the new page, although the user can easily go back and forth between the two pages (the content of the pages is commonly cached), using the familiar browser commands “forward” and “backward”. However, the user often desires to see at the same time both the original page and the linked page, but this is not possible with conventional Web browsers unless doing complicated actions. For example, two different windows can be opened; some Web browsers allow multiple parent windows while others only allow multiple children windows. In either case, additional user actions are required. It may also be difficult to arrange the two windows on the screen so as to satisfactorily view the two pages. Even when a feature in a Web browser allows the simultaneous display of multiple fields or “frames” within a single window, this feature cannot be used to simultaneously display an original page and a linked page. All of the frames within the window collectively constitute a “page” or document, so when a hyperlink in any given frame within the window is selected, the original page is still replaced.
For the reasons discussed above and for many other technical or ergonomic reasons, it is a fact today that reading paper cannot be compared with reading an electronic media (e.g., an e-book by using a MS Reader). Even if the enthusiasm of the public for new computer-based multimedia services has been considered by many analysts as a threat to the conventional forms of hard-copied publishing, the experience shows that reading paper remains preferable for most people, whether they are familiar with computers or not.
For most people, paper has a number of advantages:                paper is easy to read, mark, and manipulate;        paper is portable, familiar and can be easily distributed.        
In fact, people are very skilled at browsing through paper catalogs, magazines, newspapers, maps and books by flipping through the pages and glancing at pictures and text. A collection of printed color photographs can be much easily and quickly browsed than a sequence of computer screens. In publication entitled “The Last Book”, IBM Systems Journal, Vol 36, No. 3 Vol 36, No. 3—1997, by J. Jacobson, B. Comiskey, C. Turner, J. Albert, and P. Tsao of the MIT Media Laboratory, the authors compare printed books and computer screens in the following terms:
“A book represents a fundamentally different entity than a computer screen in that it is a physical embodiment of a large number of simultaneous high-resolution displays. When we turn the page, we do not lose the previous page. Through evolution the brain has developed a highly sophisticated spatial map. Persons familiar with a manual or textbook can find information that they are seeking with high specificity, as evidenced by their ability to remember whether something that was seen only briefly was on the right side or left side of a page, for instance. Furthermore their haptic connection with the brain's spatial map comprises a highly natural and effective interface, when such information is embodied on actual multiple physical pages.
Another aspect of embodying information on multiple, simultaneous pages is that of serendipity and comparison. We may leaf through a large volume of text and graphics, inserting a finger bookmark into those areas of greatest interest. Similarly, we may assemble a large body of similar matter in order to view elements in contrast to one another, such as might be done to determine which of a particular set of graphical designs is most satisfying”.
Notwithstanding the advances made in computer technology in the field of recording and processing data, the use of paper has not decreased. Paper continues to be the information display system the most used. Among all other display systems, paper is portable, available everywhere, can be easily used and manipulated and provides the highest resolution. The accumulation of documents from meetings, mail, paper-based creative and planning work is a common experience. Moreover, because a paper document is more usable than a computer screen for displaying information, it is obvious that a large portion of the paper accumulation results from the print of electronic documents. Most people perform their daily work (such as reading, revisions, additions, meetings, projects, presentations, annotations) on paper and use printed copies of original electronic documents.
As a conclusion, even if many electronic document systems (e.g., Web browsers, e-books readers) attempt to replace paper by providing new applications such as the access to multimedia information and services, however a lot of users today still work with paper. Many analysts admit that: “consumers will insist on printing most of their documents” (e.g., e-books, for reading, for browsing, for consulting). Moreover, a new publishing technology that has been named “Printing-on-demand” is contributing to keep alive this preference of people for printed information.
Print-on-demand is in fact a new printing technology, and also a new form of information distribution that makes possible the production of very low print runs. It is a production system where just the required number of copies is printed. Unlike so-called “short-run” printing, defined as traditional book printing in small batches (50-100) for very limited stockholding, print-on-demand enables the printing of a single book in response to a particular customer order. That means that on-demand titles never goes into stock. The ultimate step in print-on-demand is the production of one copy at a time. This technology dramatically reduces the storage of hard copies and thus reduces the inventories, the distribution costs and the expense for recycling or destroying unused copies. Moreover this technology enables on-demand reprinting, which means that titles no longer fall “out of print”. Print-on-demand requires the application of so-called “digital printing”, which is a computer-to-print method producing electronically black and white or multicolored printed products directly from an information system using a digitally controlled printing system.
The widespread use of Internet and mobile communications offer a lot of new opportunities to combine electronic and printed media, in other words to create “media-adaptive multimedia” products. The philosophy behind the concept of “media-adaptive multimedia” is that information must be transferred to users in a form adapted to their needs. In fact, traditionally printed documents, digitally printed documents and multimedia products must be complementary. The different components must be combined depending on the users needs. To facilitate this evolution, the “electronic content should be accessible directly from the printed medium”.
When an electronic document comprising:                hypertext (e.g. an e-book with hyperlinks from different items—words, pictures, foot notes, symbols, icons—to multimedia information or services), or        attachements (e.g., an e-mail with several files attached, anchored by file icons or “hotspots” on the same note),is printed, the fundamental characteristic of this electronic document which consists in accessing multimedia services disappears. It becomes impossible to activate the hyperlinks comprised in the electronic document or to edit and view the attachments from the printed copy. Complementary means are required to identify the locations of the hyperlinks on the printed surface of the physical copy and to activate them directly.        
Therefore, there is a real need to provide users with new systems and methods for improving physical copies of electronic (hyperlinked) documents, (e.g., e-books, Web pages, Lotus Notes, MS Word, Lotus WordPro or Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF)) and in particular for accessing from a physical copy information accessible from an original electronic document, said information comprising images, sounds and/or additional text.
None of the methods referenced in the prior art describes a system that would enable a user to automatically generate, from an electronic hyperlinked document, the information required to access to hypermedia information or services simply by touching with a fingertip a physical unmarked copy of the original electronic document, (for instance, to edit and view an attached file simply by touching the printed icon of the attachment on the printed copy of an IBM Lotus Notes note).